Uptima Business Bootcamp: Program aims to build new business innovation in Oakland

The concept behind Uptima Business Bootcamp is so novel it is hard to give it a snappy tagline that can be swallowed in one go. Uptima is a cooperative, or member-owned business accelerator. Most accelerators have a business model oriented around maximizing short-term lucrativeness– which means they depend on their cohort to also maximize short-term lucrativeness. Uptima, on the other hand, has built sustainability for the sake of a sustainable community into its organizational structure and curriculum, enabling their cohort to do the same.

“With any business venture you have to establish first what are the conditions we want to promote in the long-term? What do we want the impact and the legacy of this to be? And then you work backwards to determine a legal structure that aligns incentives according to those intentions,” says Seyed Amiry, cofounder of Uptima. “So many people have these dreams for their business but the system forces them to compromise here and there, sell out this ideal, they have no choice but to neglect everything but the bottom line.”

Read more of this story–and lots more about Oakland business innovation–at Live Work Oakland: http://bit.ly/1nxaQuX

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